Do you think we have free will?

Hagart makes a good point, Karin, and indeed will power does not require free will. You either have will power or you don't and when you get it you don't pick when.

Lucidity is still a condition whilst dreaming which influences how the dreamer feels and subsequently behaves. There are occasions where the dreamer continues to run from the monster despite realising the true nature of what is perceived. In such DILDs, running away isn't much of a choice. It can even be argued that when one runs feeling threatened, one has no choice. (Or the individual feels like there is no choice but to run! Take your pick if you want to play with semantics.) However you describe it, it is still a conditioned behaviour stimulated by an extant irrational fear which can also exist in waking states and exert constraining power. In most oneiric cases, however, such fear which urges the dreamer to run is most prevalent before lucidity and during its incipience. With practice we may be able to mitigate the emergence of irrational fear in lucid dreams, and practice takes repetition! (Some oneironauts nail it quite quickly.)

The main point I'm making is that all behaviours are permissible insofar as the compatibility of the causal brain states manifests at the right time - something the sense of self does not control - in order to obtain a positive sensation and a strong illusion of free will. In other words, all behaviours are conditioned by feelings that can be described by the following adjectives which you cannot help but have (some desired, some unwanted): afraid; brave; happy; sad; angry; excited; euphoric etc.

The unknown can often incite fear in people. So can false belief, eg. you believe the dream to be really happening. But if you see through the illusion, then the reason for the illusion-based fear is likely to vanish because you have now stumbled upon a new perspective of clarity, i.e. you know you are dreaming and this causes you to feel playful. Knowledge influences behaviour and clarity is not control, it may only be conducive to the reinforcement of the illusion of such. Having attained lucidity in a dream, what you do next is then influenced by unconscious urges - just like any other state of consciousness - whether or not you happen to recall your plan of action that you devised before bedtime. All the scenarios presented here, so far, lack liberty propre. They merely spell out conditioned behaviours devoid of free will. The concept of free will can't even be defined coherently because it is so absurd.

If ordinary dreaming means NOT breathing, then lucid dreaming is breathing, and the latter, as you know, is a necessity (for there is only so far a person can inhale before feeling compelled to exhale). If you become lucid, turn around, and embrace the monstrous pursuer, it is only because the dream figure is observed in a different light which encourages a friendly approach. (Other areas of the brain are triggered.) But having done so, you may ask yourself why you didn't transform the monster into a delicious chocolate fountain. The answer is as follows: it didn't occur to you at the time. This reality is the source of quotidian exclamations such as, "Why didn't I do that," "I regret what I did," "I wish I had acted differently," "I lost a perfect opportunity."

The perceived freedom to ask a dream character why you feel hatred towards it (see, you don't even know where this comes from!) is an action which is also conditioned by a state of curiosity and concern preceded by a recurrent, stimulating nightmare of the non-lucid realm and of which you absolutely had no control over. This also reminds me: to say that dream characters don't have a clue about their origin (dreamed by us) is to imply that they are sentient beings, too. There is no evidence for this and observations that such mental forms transmute into inanimate objects strongly suggest the opposite. The dream world is merely representative of the mind and its information content. It is more likely that "dream matter" emulates things real and imagined.

Now, about your Cartesian hypothesis, Karin...

Sorry to break it to you but it has already been considered earlier in this thread. I did say that even the concept of a soul cannot salvage and coherently preserve free will. Presumably, a soul would also be swayed by feelings and thought processes whose origins would remain obscure and would beg the question of a metaphysical mechanism behind it. In other words, a soul would still perceive environmental events, feel something at the exposure, and subsequently act in influence. Anyway, I disbelieve in souls for the same reasons as Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, and, ironically, the compatibilist Daniel Dennett. (One of the things I agree with Dennett is his view on consciousness derived from cognitive science.) But I won't go into my reasons rigorously so as to prevent divagation. I will only recommend Susan Blackmore's thesis on consciousness.

I wish to ram this home, though. Your hypothesis violates everything that has been observed so far in the field of neuroscience. Brain functionality, whether one likes it or not, dictates a person's conduct besides the presence or absence of consciousness and self-awareness. To reiterate, free choice is an illusion. You might egg yourself on to adopt a particular code of conduct "no matter what," but this is nothing but conditioned planning (whose success is measured by the strength of the urge and degree of motivation - do you feel motivated?) after having been exposed to unsatisfactory outcomes of the former behaviour that you were so accustomed to. Even resolutions based on learned lessons in life translate as conditioned behaviour, conduct influenced by memories and the mnemonic impact upon the rest of the cerebral cortices responsible for emotional states and caused intentionalities. Again, I pose the libertarian the question: Where is free will?

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

In the case of free will, if it's ineffectual, as you say, then it is not free. It is simply will determined by prior causation as well as present environmental influence. Therefore, the freedom part is automatically precluded and the term loses its definition (which wasn't coherent in the first place). But the reasons why free will is an illusion aren't the ones you mentioned. If you review this thread, you will find a number of irrefutable arguments against free will, and why determinism is true, which I will not bother to mention again to avoid being repetitive - but I will recommend this seminar which just about covers the essence of the argument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk

Here's a little something from biology I would like to point out in addition. Free will is in violation of the blind mechanism behind genes and their effects. Free will cannot withstand the reality of phenotypes in living things. The fact that our DNA, which carries "instructions" for how an organism should develop (that we are mostly unaware of as we go about our day-to-day lives) and play their role in evolution beyond our control, is another demonstration of free will not fitting in. If free will could be demonstrated, Darwinism wouldn't even take off.

Our molecules are simply arranged in more complicated patterns than non-living things - but rest assured that we had non-living simple beginnings, too! We may be warm, we may appear to possess some sort of "living spark" inside us, we may display erratic behaviour, we may even feel capricious at times, we may be very different from rocks - but, in reality, we are simply bundles of complex matter set in motion by natural selection. We - with our cellular factories containing proteins, amino acids, chromosomes, genes, and all - are really analogous to digital machines with sets of instructions that we did not select. The relationship between RNA and DNA inside cells and how they effect the rest of the organism really isn't that much different from that of a computer. We are dictated by our insides as well as impacted upon by the external world.

Free will is a persistent myth.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

That is a very weak argument. First, how can you describe your next thought if you don't know what it is? Second, stating the obvious, or tautologies, isn't a sign of free will. They are either obviously true, or ambiguously true in your example, whether you like it or not. The puppet can be aware of what's obvious, and even if the puppet wasn't aware of such one moment, but became aware of the objective truisms the next, he still wouldn't have free will. It just dawned on him. It happened upon him. It was suddenly brought to his attention whether he welcomed the realisation or not.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

It's already been answered and the answer is 'no'. Lucid dreaming is merely a different state from ordinary dreaming which begets different urges. It's the same as not having free will while you're awake.

I know, I noticed,Enra Traz. But since the thread is old, I returned to ask.The brain is not something binary, it is not an operating system that works based on programs to respond automatically to certain commands, it does not have scripts or addons. The brain is not limited, contrary to what one might imagine. However, it is true that much of what we see is just a real illusion, meaning that what we see is false generated by our unconscious, and here we question some of our actions as human beings. We are also influenced by humanity in all aspects from religion, politics, numerology, astrology, etc..etc ... but among the many details of our brain, there is one that gives us the freedom to be totally free, is the simulation of the future and to be to simulate the future we are creating a reality in our minds, the mere fact that imagination / creativity is already something that frees us from the mental prison, something that we can call individual freedom or free will.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Imagination or creativity are not examples of free will as they too have underlying causes of which we are not aware of. You may decide right now to think of a particular person but you won't know why it never occurred to you to pick someone else. Also, if we really had freedom with our imaginations, painters wouldn't draw blanks and writers wouldn't experience blocks when all they want is to be creative.

Not all of humanity has this gift of uncontrolled mind, in fact, this is real. But this art called Concentration, better known as Raja-Yoga teaches us that this is possible. It is possible to control a machine called Brain by inner Power. So your theory that we do not control what we think is wrong, or what we think in two days or even in a year. Note that I'm not talking about religious theories, but facts belonging to a spirituality. Science calls the illusion of free will, spirituality calls it by the mental slavery.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows